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An airport for a modern nation builder

A Toronto man wants to change the name of the airport in Thunder Bay to honour his grandfather.

Artist Norval Morrisseau,is shown sested in front of his painting, Andogyny, at the national gallery in Ottawa in 2006, a year before his death. If Thunder Bay's airport was to be renamed, Joe Fiorito suggests it could be named after Morrisseau.
(BILL GRIMSHAW FILE PHOTO)

Toronto’s streetcars are made in Thunder Bay, my hometown. This is a source of pride — I am a streetcar guy — and I will boost my street cred at home when I say that those cars are made in Westfort, not far from where I grew up.

Oh, and please don’t hold the workers there responsible for the delay in the delivery of the new cars. The management of Hawker-Siddeley — no, it is Canada Car — no, it is Bombardier — is squarely to blame.

An aside: live long enough, and all the names for everything change.

Another aside: when I was a lad, the folks at home would say, resolutely, Bomber Dear.

Some still do.

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There are other Toronto-Thunder Bay connections; several journalists at the Star cut their journalistic teeth in Fort William, or Port Arthur, or Thunder Bay.

And I fly home now and then; planes land at the Thunder Bay International Airport. That’s a bland name, but we are nearing the 150th birthday of this country, and there is a man in Toronto who wants to seize the moment.

Tom Howe was born in Port Arthur, which is the northern half of Thunder Bay. His name might not ring a bell until I tell you that he is the grandson of the late Clarence Decatur Howe.

Still no bells?

Oh, children.

C.D. Howe was a member of parliament for the riding of Port Arthur. He served in the cabinets of Louis St. Laurent and Mackenzie King.

During the Second World War, Howe was known as the Minister Responsible for Everything.

Howe recruited the dollar-a-year men, those captains of industry — including E.P. Taylor — who were charged with feeding, clothing, arming, equipping and shipping our troops.

Howe began as an engineer. He made his mark as a designer and builder of grain elevators at the head of the lakes.

Those elevators are mostly gone now, but at one time they held enough grain to make 10 loaves of bread for every man, woman and child in North America.

Or so the matchbox legend went.

Howe is high in my affection because he tabled the legislation that created the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

That’s not all he did.

Trans-Canada Air Lines? Howe. The AVRO Arrow? Howe again.

As we near the 150th anniversary of the country, Tom Howe is rightly of the view that his grandfather deserves a final honour as the last of the great nation builders.

His idea?

A name change: C.D. Howe International Airport in Thunder Bay. OK, sure, airports are usually named for dead premiers or prime ministers, but the airport in Winnipeg is named for Richardson, the grain man.

So there’s precedent.

I met with Tom Howe the other day. He is a television producer; if you have seen Undercover Bosses, then you know his work.

To advance his grandfather’s cause, Tom has made calls and written letters. The head of the airport in Thunder Bay? Non-committal. Marc Garneau, the minister of transport? The same. But the mayor of Thunder Bay likes the idea.

I do, too.

Although I now pause.

There are others who are deserving. I think of my cousin, Thunder Bay’s greatest hockey player: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are now about to land at Fats Delvecchio International Airport.”

Or you could name it Laskin International Airport, in honour of two brothers: Bora, our finest Supreme Court justice; and Saul, the first mayor of the amalgamated city of Thunder Bay.

I pause again.

You could name it in honour of Norval Morrisseau, the most staggeringly brilliant painter in the history of this country.

Although he was born in Beardmore — I met him there, once — Morrisseau spent a fair amount of time in Thunder Bay.

Given the miserable treatment of aboriginal people in my old hometown, I think he’d be a great choice on the 150th anniversary of the country.

Imagine the murals.

I put that notion to Tom Howe. He is a lovely guy with an open mind and a generous heart. He smiled in quick agreement that Morrisseau would be a great choice, and perhaps a healing one.

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